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Michael Tomasky Proclaims ‘Paul Ryan: Still a Total Jerk’

Liberal “Daily Beast” columnist Michael Tomasky must really dislike Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) because he took to the internet today to rant against his latest budget. Tomasky blared in an April 3rd piece that Paul Ryan was “still a total jerk” before engaging in a long-winded attack against the Tea Party favorite.

Tomasky began his piece by fretting “Remind me not to get in a foxhole with Paul Ryan. At the first sign of trouble, he’ll pack up his gunny sack and head for base camp, running into the latrine to hide. Or so I conclude from the budget he released this week.”

After spending two paragraphs mocking Ryan’s post-2012 state-of-mind, Tomasky returned to attacking Ryan:

Then came the CPAC conference a month ago, and he tells one little story, about the kid who didn’t want a free lunch, just a normal brown bag like the other kids, and he gets it wrong, and the real and true version of the story doesn’t remotely prove the point he wants it to prove in his retelling, and he gets hammered over it for days, and boom, he throws in the poverty towel. To blazes with those poors. Kicking them was pretty fun after all.

I jest, of course, with my chronology. But the budget he put out this week is nothing to laugh at. Or maybe on reflection it is something to laugh at. Why in the world does it exist, and what good do he and his fellow House Republicans think it’s going to do them?

The “Daily Beast” columnist then began to smear the latest Ryan budget for not supporting liberal causes:

In case you haven’t heard the basic skinny, it’s a budget that’s very pre-new Paul Ryan, characterized by the two features that have chiefly characterized all Ryan budgets: meanness and dishonesty. Meanness starts with the $5.1 trillion in cuts to domestic discretionary spending programs over 10 years, with steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, and—

No, wait. Let’s stop here and mull this food stamp cut. As you probably know, in last year’s farm bill negotiations, House Republicans proposed a $40 billion cut to food stamps. By the time the House and Senate agreed to a farm bill last month, that was whittled down to $8.7 billion over 10 years. That’s a small cut in percentage terms (about 1 percent). But even it takes $90 a month away from 850,000 poor families. Ryan’s proposed food stamps cut? $125 billion. More than 14 times the size of the already controversial current cut. As St. Paul sayeth, we rejoice in our sufferings.

This is the symbol the GOP wants to present? The party that destroys federal education programs, Medicaid, food stamps, and (in the future) Medicare? I suppose they think it’ll rev up their base. Will it really? This is the fifth Ryan budget by my count. They’ve all said in essence the same thing, and they’ve all gone the same place: nowhere.”

After spending eight paragraphs condemning Congressman Ryan for proposing a conservative budget that slows the growth of spending, Tomasky concluded by taking one last nasty swipe at the Republican:

I’d like to know, sort of, what’s actually in Paul Ryan’s head and heart. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. What matters with him, as with any politician, is what he puts on paper. And here we have it. If this is trying to help the poor, then what Putin is doing in Russia is pro-gay. At least we won’t have to read any more “Paul Ryan loves poor people” stories. So long, St. Paul.

Essentially, Tomasky was upset with Ryan for introducing a budget that unsurprisingly doesn’t align with the “Daily Beast” columnist liberal ideology. Unsurprisingly, Tomasky’s attack on the Ryan budget is in line with his other attacks on conservatives. He has written “How radical becomes normal” and called former Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) a “sleazy Christian” so this latest attack is par for the course for Tomasky.

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